a4uExpo 2009 – Piggynap’s Review

It’s been 5 days since a4uExpo (a long time on the internet!) but I’ve only just had time to sit down and write my review My excuse? Well, I moved house just before a4u, and then didn’t have internet for a week! Anyway, I made LOADS of notes when I was there and while they’re not going into my review, they’ll make quite a few blog posts in their own right.

It was the first conference I’d ever been to outside of Leeds – obviously I’d attended/spoken at Think Visibility but London conferences seemed pretty out of reach. I need to say thanks to Patrick for taking me – I know that other companies wouldn’t stump up the attendance fee so it just goes to show how lucky I am to work at Branded3

For a first-timer then, I was pretty impressed by how the whole conference was run. Firstly, the venue was amazing. I’d been to the Expo Centre before when I was at university, but I never realised just how prepared they are for conferences. There’s a huge row of hotels right outside and good transport links to the City. During the day, there’s tea when you need it, food when you need it, and the conference rooms are brilliant with all the high-tech stuff you need. Despite there being hundreds of delegates, I never saw any rubbish around nor heard any grumbling about the lack of tea/food – that’s down to the excellent staff who made the whole thing run smoothly.

What about the talks? Well, they were all run incredibly well. A huge mention has to go to Jon Myers who seemed to be moderating/introducing every single talk I went to. Most of the speakers seemed to be conference pros, including SEOMoz co-founder Gillian Muessig, who gave a particularly assured and interesting talk on turning your ’stuff’ into new products and finding new audiences.

My favourite talk of the two days might come as a surprise to some people – it was actually marked ‘basic’ in the timetable. It was the first talk of the day by Angela Greenwood and Joshna Patel from Red Letter Days. They talked about building a successful affiliate programme from the ground up, from a merchant’s point of view. I knew nothing whatsoever about this side of affiliate marketing so it taught me a lot. It was nice to actually hear from someone like Joshna who works within a company (like myself) and not just the MD.

You can tell just how big a deal a4u is by 3 things. 1) Google send delegates. 2) All the affiliate networks are there. 3) Even though it’s an affiliate conference, the top SEO’s go.